Matthew 11: The Gentleness of Jesus, a Strength That Restores

Introduction

Oliver Blythe's son loves insects. Not just a little: he spends his recesses looking for them with his best friend, and for his birthday he asked for insects. A guest came with giant insects, including one of the largest species of cockroach in the world. So his parents keep telling him: "Gently, gently, you'll crush it." He is big and the insect is small. He is strong and the insect is weak. What feels to him like a light squeeze can be fatal for the creature.

This is the picture Ollie uses to open his message at St Stephen's Presbyterian, in Surrey Hills, Australia, in a series on the fruit of the Spirit. After love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and faithfulness, here is the second-to-last fruit: gentleness.

Drawing on Matthew 11:25-30 and Galatians 6:1-5, he gives four complementary pictures of biblical gentleness: it is strong, it welcomes, it restores and it stays humble. Then he answers the question that naturally follows: how do we grow in gentleness?

Message Outline

1. The Fruit We Choose Last

If you were asked which fruit of the Spirit you most want to grow in, you would probably say self-control, love or patience. Rarely gentleness. It looks like the fruit left over once all the good ones have been taken.
Maybe that is because we have misunderstood it. We hear gentleness and think softness, passivity, someone who never stands firm on anything. "A doormat with good manners."
The biblical portrait is much better, more beautiful and more vital than that.
Like the pastor's son facing the insects, we are stronger than we think. Our words have power, our knowledge has power, our authority has power. The way we act, speak or correct can help someone or hurt them.
And we do not see what others are carrying: grief, shame, a struggle with sin, a life damaged far from God. "You don't know what someone has been through before they walk into the room." What is a light squeeze for us can become a crushing weight for them.

2. Gentleness Is Not the Opposite of Strength

We often set the two against each other: strength is big, gentleness is small; strength gets things done, gentleness steps back. Jesus does not let us think that way.
Matthew 11 is one of the most remarkable passages in the Bible, probably the only one where Jesus opens a window onto his own heart: "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart; and you will find rest for your souls" (Matthew 11:29).
This should surprise us. A few verses earlier, he says: "All things have been delivered to me by my Father" (Matthew 11:27). He is by far the strongest person who ever lived. We would expect him to dominate, demand or impose. He is gentle.
The King of the universe kneels before dirty feet. The one who commands the storms takes little children onto his knees. The one who could call legions of angels gently restores Peter after his denial.
Gentleness and strength go together: gentleness is the controlled use of your strength for the good of someone else. Like the shepherd who carries the lost sheep, the parent who reassures a frightened child, the person who helps an elderly neighbor cross the street.
This gentle strength is sometimes seen most clearly when an unpopular truth has to be spoken. Ollie mentions Peter Jensen, a well-known Christian leader in Australia, who was a guest in 2012 on the television program Q&A during the debate on same-sex marriage. Surrounded by other guests opposed to his position and facing fierce attacks, he neither hit back nor gave way: he calmly set out what the Bible says about marriage, between a man and a woman. "You couldn't help but be impressed by the quiet strength" of his answer.
Tomorrow morning, you will have the chance to live it out. When the children ignore the instruction for the twentieth time before breakfast, instead of intimidating them, you show patience. When a colleague gets the figures wrong again, instead of humiliating him, you encourage him. When a brother or sister annoys you, you answer calmly.

3. Gentleness Welcomes

"Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28).
When he was younger, Ollie had to mow a big lawn with his brother, front and back of the house, using a push mower with dull, rusty blades. Hours of work, limbs heavy as lead, skin burned by the sun, and then collapsing onto the couch.
Jesus is speaking here of a deeper weariness: weariness of the soul. The pressure of always having to hold it together, the conversation we keep replaying in our heads, the quiet anxiety that follows us everywhere, the burden of pretending to be fine.
Like a huge backpack loaded with guilt for what we wish we could undo, grief for those we have lost, fear of what we cannot control, shame for what we hope no one will ever discover.
"Come to me." Before offering anything at all, Jesus offers himself. Gentleness does not begin by fixing people, it begins by welcoming them. You do not have to clean yourself up first, or pretend, or carry your burden alone.
If we belong to him, gentleness also means welcoming others. Ollie speaks of a friend who can talk to anyone: the first-time visitor, the faithful member of forty years, the person who sits at the back hoping nobody will speak to them. He does nothing extraordinary: he listens, he asks questions, he remembers, he makes room.
Welcoming with gentleness is not just being nice. It is listening before fixing, asking before assuming, making room before giving advice. If the gentleness of Jesus makes weary people want to come to him, our gentleness should make them want to come to us, so that we can lead them to him.

4. Gentleness Restores

"Brothers, even if a man is caught in some transgression, you who are spiritual must restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness" (Galatians 6:1).
The Greek verb (katartizō) means to repair, to put back in working order: mending a torn fishing net, untangling a necklace, setting a broken bone.
Ollie has broken ten bones in his life, the worst being his leg: both bones of the lower leg broken between the knee and the ankle. The surgeon did not ignore the fracture. Nor did he pull out a saw and cut off the leg, "otherwise I would be a pirate." He treated the fracture gently.
This is how we are to use gentleness: not ignoring sin, but not crushing the sinner. Restoring him.
Gentleness surprises us here. We often think it means not upsetting anyone, avoiding awkward situations. But biblical gentleness sometimes means saying exactly what the other person does not want to hear, going toward the difficulty instead of running from it.
You do not restore what is broken by pretending nothing happened. You come close, you tell the truth, you help the person return to Jesus. It can hurt, as when the surgeon straightened the leg. "Gentleness doesn't mean avoiding pain. It means being willing to endure it for the sake of healing."
Ollie tells the story of a man who came from a background with no connection to the church, living a chaotic life. He meets Christians, reads the Bible with them, puts his trust in Jesus. Then he gradually falls back: drugs again, the street, and hostility toward the church that had welcomed him.
The church had to remove him from the membership list. But it did not wash its hands of him. One man kept spending time with him, a couple opened their home so he would not sleep outside, others invited him again and again despite his refusals. They never said his sin was acceptable, but they did not treat him as a lost cause.
In time, he came back: the Bible, then meetings with Christians, then worship. One Sunday, he stood up, confessed his sin and asked for forgiveness. The church welcomed him with open arms. You do not pretend the bone is not broken, but you do not throw the person away because it is.

5. Gentleness Stays Humble

"For if a man thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each man test his own work" (Galatians 6:3-4).
Paul warns us against thinking we are better than the person we are restoring. Jesus himself ties the two together: "gentle and lowly in heart."
When someone stumbles, our hearts are tempted to climb onto a pedestal: "How could he do something so stupid? I would never do that." That is precisely the danger Paul points out.
Ollie remembers a car ride to meet a man who had made a mess of his life. On the way, he felt his heart leaning that direction and had to pray Galatians 6: "Lord, keep me humble." He was not going as an expert who had it all sorted, but as "a beggar going to tell another beggar where to find food."
Gentleness does not stand above to rebuke, it sits beside to restore. Without the grace of God, I would be there too.

6. A Fruit of the Spirit, Not an Effort of Will

You may be convinced that you need more gentleness. What can you do? Gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit: it is the Spirit of God who produces it in us by making us more like Jesus.
So the goal is not to grit your teeth and become a nicer person. "It's like trying to climb to the sun with a ladder."
We pray: "Holy Spirit, make me more like Jesus. Give me strength, but teach me to use it for the good of others. Give me the courage to tell the truth, and the gentleness to tell it without crushing. Give me the humility to remember my own need of grace. Give me the patience to walk alongside the other person toward restoration."
The Spirit turns our eyes to Jesus. Gentleness grows by looking to him, not by looking at ourselves more. It is hard to stand proudly above someone when you have spent the morning remembering the gentleness of Jesus toward you. Hard to crush someone for a failure when Jesus did not crush you. Hard to refuse mercy when Jesus did not refuse it to you.

7. "Gently, You'll Crush It"

Ollie comes back to his son and the insects. God has given us strength too: a strong personality, knowledge, authority, words that carry weight, confidence. These are not bad things.
We do not need to become weaker. We need to learn to use our strength for the good of the other: welcoming rather than intimidating, restoring rather than crushing, lowering ourselves rather than looking down on others.
This week, when you face someone who is hurting, struggling, caught in sin or simply difficult, remember: "Gently, gently, you'll crush it." It is not weakness, nor passivity, nor running from the truth. It is strong hands used with care.
And while you are thinking of it, pray: "Holy Spirit, help me to be gentle like Jesus."

Key Takeaways

Gentleness is not the opposite of strength: it is the controlled use of your strength for the good of someone else.
Jesus, to whom all things have been given, calls himself "gentle and lowly in heart." Before offering anything, he offers himself: "Come to me."
Gentleness restores: it does not ignore sin and does not crush the sinner, it comes close, tells the truth and walks with the person toward Jesus.
Gentleness stays humble: the one who restores is no better than the one being restored.
Gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit. It grows when we pray and when we look to the gentleness of Jesus toward us.

Personal Application

In what area do you have strength (words, knowledge, authority, temperament) that could crush someone without you realizing it?
What burden are you carrying right now (guilt, grief, fear, shame) that you have not yet brought to Jesus?
Who around you needs you to listen to them before you give them advice?
Is there someone you avoid correcting for fear of awkwardness, or on the contrary someone you correct without gentleness?
When someone stumbles, does your heart climb onto a pedestal? How can you remember your own need of grace this week?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

Is gentleness a form of weakness?

No. For Ollie, gentleness is not the opposite of strength. Jesus, to whom all things have been delivered by the Father, still says: "I am gentle and lowly in heart" (Matthew 11:29). Gentleness is the controlled use of your strength for the good of someone else.

What does "restore in a spirit of gentleness" mean in Galatians 6:1?

The Greek word describes the act of repairing, of putting back in working order: a torn net, a tangled necklace, a broken bone. Like a surgeon, you do not pretend the fracture is not there, but you do not break the person either. You come close, tell them the truth and help them return to Jesus.

How do we grow in gentleness?

Gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit. It is not about gritting your teeth to become a nicer person. We ask the Holy Spirit to make us more like Jesus, and we look to Jesus: it is hard to crush someone when you remember that Jesus did not crush us.